Ben Affleck: ‘I’m not working on the Justice League’

If you’ve been following our ongoing coverage of Warner Bros. upcoming, still-hypothetical movie based on DC Comics’ Justice League superhero team, then you no doubt know that Ben Affleck was rumored to be assuming the role of the director (and possibly one of the stars) for the movie. Likewise, you also probably know that other, separate rumors claim that Affleck will not be directing. With so many conflicting reports, who is a person to believe?

How about Affleck himself?

“I’m not working on the Justice League,” Affleck recently told Vancouver, BC news organization 24 Hours Vancouver. “One of the problems with entertainment web sites is that they need to fill pages, and that’s how rumours get started. Justice League sounds really exciting, but it’s not something I’m working on.”

24 Hours then attempts to work around Affleck’s own words by saying that just because the man is not currently working on Justice League, that does not mean that he wouldn’t be up for it in the future. This movie is still a ways away from entering production, so why couldn’t Affleck sign on later? Or so the site’s reasoning seems to go.

We however, are done with this. If Ben Affleck says he’s not directing Justice League, then as far as we’re concerned he’s not directing Justice League. Until an official press release contradicts this idea, we think it would be more prudent to speculate on other possible directors than to constantly flog this “Affleck as Justice League director” idea to death. Intriguingly, there are new rumors circulating that the Wachowski siblings are among Warner Bros.’ prospective auteurs, and despite their middling success since The Matrix, you can’t deny that a Wachowski-helmed Justice League flick would, at the very least, be a massive visual spectacle — and call us shallow, but we kinda dig Wachowski-brand spectacle, even if it’s severely lacking in complementary substance.

Excitement aside, and as much as this is quite literally our job, can we place a moratorium on Justice League director rumors? We aren’t going to get Christopher Nolan to helm this project, Affleck is presumably out and that Wachowskis thing I just mentioned is as likely to be entirely made up as it is to be legitimate. Maybe those other sites mentioned by Affleck that desperately need to pad out their page views can’t see what’s going on here, but we’re growing tired of reporting on what is effectively a lack of information. We’d convey the same meaning and ramifications by telling you all kid’s fairy tales. You know the Three Billy Goats Gruff, right? Not only is that a great story, it’s also exactly as likely to come true as any of these rumors. Let’s make a pact here: You won’t read any of this stuff, we won’t write about it, and instead we’ll all focus on something more important (like, literally anything else). Deal?